The Moon Gets Broadband Wireless Connection

5/30/2014

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Working from moon? Well forget
dial-up speeds. A team of MIT and NASA researchers is representing a
laser-based data communication technology that delivers space workers with the
connectivity we have on Earth. That means huge data transfers and other stuff
like high-definition video streaming from and on the surface of the moon. Last
fall, the on-orbit presentation of their moon-to-Earth uplink crushed earlier
transmission speed records. Now they’ve got the fundamental physics fixed out,
and they think the technology could even spread into deep-space operations to
Mars.

Image Credit: NASA & Robert LaFon

The Lunar Laser Communication
Demonstration (LLCD) transferred over 384,633 kilometers between here and the
moon at a download rate of 622 megabits per second. They also transferred data
from Earth to the moon at 19.44 megabits per second. It is 4,800 times quicker
than the best radio frequency uplink ever used.

Mark Stevens of MIT Lincoln
Laboratory states in a news statement. “Communicating at high data rates from
Earth to the moon with laser beams is challenging because of the
400,000-kilometer distance spreading out the light beam. It’s doubly difficult
going through the atmosphere, because turbulence can bend light -- causing
rapid fading or dropouts of the signal at the receiver.”